BEIJING, Dec. 8 (Xinhua) -- China's state-owned banks have matured enough to expand abroad, says Zhu Xiaohuang, chief risk consultant with the China Construction Bank, one of the major state-owned banks.

At the ongoing annual meeting of the 21st Century Forum, Zhu spoke on state-owned banks competing internationally.

Zhu said state-owned banks in the past could not offer services for the overseas business of domestic companies. After being transformed into share-holding companies and successfully listing on the international market, they have become qualified to expand business overseas.

"There are several major means for the Chinese banks to develop business overseas," Zhu said. They could absorb overseas investment, make good use of foreign capital, open branch offices or purchase overseas financial institutes to directly serve overseas customers.

In August, China Construction Bank announced it is to invest 9.7 billion HK dollars (1.2 billion U.S. dollars) to buy out the Bank of America in Asia, with a view to expand its business in Hong Kong. In November, the just-listed Industrial and Commercial Bank of China revealed plans to purchase an Indonesia bank. 

 "All these cases have shown that China's state-owned banks are facilitating their steps towards the international market," Zhu said, adding this would "help speed up the reform of the state-owned banks and improve their innovation capacity".

Zhu said the state-owned banks should learn advanced methods of management from foreign institutions, and conduct research on customer requirements when expanding business overseas.